I’m continuing my exploration of what we can do using these cheap small mini cameras when it comes to train layouts, and today’s subject is this mini pinhole wifi camera. How well does it work and what can we use it for?

After trying the SQ12 camera, I moved on to its newer sibling, the SQ23. The goal is to use it to record cab rides. As this one has wifi, a secondary goal is to see if it’s suitable as a “live camera” e.g. to broadcast a ride view to a screen.

I’ve been doing all my “cab ride” recordings using a Mobius Action Cam. A few months ago I tried the RunCam 2 for comparison.This time I decided to try one of the SQ “mini” cameras series for a change.

I'd like to elaborate a few points, with some pros and cons, which I had been thinking about when I started the project. Upfront I want to make it clear I am not advocating for one solution or another. I am offering "food for thoughts", pros and cons, and matter of discussion. Some of the discussion involved industries or city names which are specific to CMRS’ layout. A map of it can be found in the link above.

A lot of my interests when it comes to model train layouts are all about automation. Automation can mean to make the trains move automatically but it can also mean to automate signaling -- displaying semaphores and search lights according to traffic on the layout. The common denominator for both is block occupancy detection, namely to know where trains are on the layout.

As previously discussed, on the Randall layout, visitors press a button to trigger the trains’ automated sequence. Soon enough, we added a sign asking people to be nice with that button. The sign has nothing to do with the actual electronics behind nor the automation, not even the button itself. Both the button and the software are sturdy enough to survive any abuse.

And abuse there is. The abuse is simply… social. Kids hammer that button like there’s no tomorrow. Does it make trains run faster or more frequently? Nope. One would hope it would be a good exercise in parenting in teaching kids to be reasonable and treat common property adequately, but alas, no.

Eventually Jim and I had enough of it and I decided we could simply use a motion sensor as trigger instead of a hardware button. Back in March, I built this prototype:

The original design for the motion sensor was to use an ESP32 with an HC-SR501. The ESP32 would be used to send a sensor activation command to JMRI.

The Digispark Tiny is a probably the most basic and compact Arduino-like I’ve worked with. It’s about the size of an USB A plug. It is powered by an ATTiny85 and offers 1-5 I/Os depending on usage (typically 2-3).

(image source: mister-bidouilles.fr)

Kickstarter Date: 2014.

Example of the Digispark Tiny connected to an USB OTG with a PIR sensor:

I’ll just leave this here for those who use Advanced Tomato on their wifi routers: the “Quality (%)” column in the Device List is not a percentage at all. It’s just a delta from the client’s RSSI to the interface floor noise in dBm.

The latest video I did was an update of the full “cab ride” layout tour of the Randall Museum layout.

In the past I’ve used the same camera as for all my previous cab rides, a Mobius Action Cam. When I tried to use it after a year of inactivity, I realized the battery is dead and won’t hold a charge for more than 10 minutes. I can order a new battery, but maybe it was worth looking at what had changed in the domain in between. Let’s look at the Runcam 2.

Some members at the CMRS train club (the Carquinez Model Railroad Society, in Crockett, CA) desired to have large touch panels that members could use to toggle switches on the mainline. For testing, one of the members procured 32-inch touch panels and I wrote a quick experimental software to display the mainline on it and control turnouts based on touch.

The touch panels rely on the main JMRI server to trigger turnouts on the mainline.

This post documents my first prototype demonstration for this project. This was going to be an iterative process as I expected to incorporate feedback later. What I came up with is fairly easy to reuse for other layouts -- I’ve implemented something similar at Randall just after, so I’ll explain how it is implemented in the hope others want to use that or get inspired by it..